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Empedokles in identifying his "elements" with Matter is
refuted by their decay.
Anaxagoras, in identifying his "primal-combination" with Matter-
to which he allots no mere aptness to any and every nature or
quality but the effective possession of all- withdraws in this
way the very Intellectual-Principle he had introduced; for this
Mind is not to him the bestower of shape, of Forming Idea; and it
is co-aeval with Matter, not its prior. But this simultaneous
existence is impossible: for if the combination derives Being by
participation, Being is the prior; if both are Authentic
Existents, then an additional Principle, a third, is imperative
[a ground of unification]. And if this Creator, Mind, must
pre-exist, why need Matter contain the Forming-Ideas parcel-wise
for the Mind, with unending labour, to assort and allot? Surely
the undetermined could be brought to quality and pattern in the
one comprehensive act?
As for the notion that all is in all, this clearly is impossible.
Those who make the base to be "the infinite" must define the
term.
If this "infinite" means "of endless extension" there is no
infinite among beings; there is neither an infinity-in-itself
[Infinity Abstract] nor an infinity as an attribute to some body;
for in the first case every part of that infinity would be
infinite and in the second an object in which the infinity was
present as an attribute could not be infinite apart from that
attribute, could not be simplex, could not therefore be Matter.
Atoms again cannot meet the need of a base.
There are no atoms; all body is divisible endlessly: besides
neither the continuity nor the ductility of corporeal things is
explicable apart from Mind, or apart from the Soul which cannot
be made up of atoms; and, again, out of atoms creation could
produce nothing but atoms: a creative power could produce nothing
from a material devoid of continuity. Any number of reasons might
be brought, and have been brought, against this hypothesis and it
need detain us no longer.
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